So… here’s the skinny!

Yesterday Nyel was (apparently) privileged to be part of the ‘Providence St. Vincent Medical Center Department of Nursing Monthly Skin Evaluation’.  According to the handout that was supplied by the “Skinny Nurse” (as they call the designated skin-check-nurse on this floor):  As a part of our nursing department’s ongoing quality improvement efforts we evaluate all inpatients on a given day once per month for any skin problems.  This is over and above the assessment your assigned nurses do each day.

What Nyel and I understand from that is that if you are “lucky” enough to be in the hospital on the particular day of the month that is the designated “Skin Day,” you get an extra examination.  We are not sure how this helps the many patients who are in the hospital only on the other 29 or 30 days of the month.  If this skin check routine is part of some “study” or for the benefit of the staff, it might make more sense.  As it was presented, though, Nyel and anyone else who happened to be “in residence” on Tuesday, March 12, 2019, get a bit of extra attention – part of an ongoing improvement effort but only for some???  Hmmm.

‘I don’t know what these dots are … but ya mind if I connect them?’

The information sheet goes on to say:   The evaluation is done by nurses who are experts in skin care issues and requires that they look at all your skin surfaces.  It will only take them a couple of minutes to do this… They will come in pairs and identify themselves to you…. The “pair” turned out to be a single person who has been Nyel’s day nurse several times during recent rotations — a nurse we like very much.  Yesterday he was wearing his specially trained “Skinny Nurse” hat.  No one was with him.

He looked at specific areas of Nyel’s skin that he remembered as problematic from previous days – “all” skin areas as designated on the handout were not a part of his procedure.  In fact, he needed reminding that Nyel had a skin tear (perhaps from tape) near his surgical incision that a wound specialist had been called in to look at several days ago.  Sigh…

Still and all… it’s nice to think that Nyel is among the few who are benefitting by this bit of extra attention.  Yay!

2 Responses to “So… here’s the skinny!”

  1. Cathy says:

    Apparently they are doing this in hospitals all over as I was in the hospital in reno in February and they did a skin exam on me. What next?

  2. Nancy Hoolden says:

    Oh my, when are you getting out of there ?

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